“We know a lot
about redlining and gentrification, but
I think it took us
a second to realize what was happening.”
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Frame TV, Samsung
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Saint Germain Limewash, Bauwerk
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Coffee Table, Isamu Noguchi
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Pendant Lamp, George Nelson; Crib, Stokke; Chair, Pottery Barn Kids; Wallpaper, Chasing Paper; Rug, Cold Picnic.
Left: Bed Frame and To Have & To Hold Tapestry, MWR Collection; Bedding, Parachute; Jitney Paint, Farrow & Ball. Center: Tile, Fireclay. Right: Mirrors, Etsy; Faucets, Wayfair.
Wallpaper, Otto Studi.
Left: Pendant Lamp, City Foundry. Right: Tricorn Black Paint, Sherwin-Williams.
Saint Germain Limewash, Bauwerk. Print of Dancing at the Louvre by Faith Ringgold.
Top: Rug and Shelves, IKEA; Pendant Lamp, CB2; Chair, Dobbin Street Vintage Co-op; TV, Samsung; Mirror, Puddle Pieces; Art by Ruby Marquez and Eva Woolridge; Prints of Barkley L. Hendricks, Kara Walker, and Faith Ringgold Works. Bottom: Tall Chair, Betsu Studio.
Right: Chandelier, Joss & Main; Stairs and Railings, Pinto Carpentry; Art by Shefon Taylor and Rayo and Honey.
Stockholm Rug, IKEA
“The house has so many plugs!” Hart adds. “We have a massive playpen that’s like an apartment for this child so he can just go ham. That helps a lot.”
And as for Baguette, the beloved family dog? “She’s laid out on her back right now on the couch,” Hart says. “She has fully adjusted.”
Even though everyone has finally moved in—including Hart’s brother, who is a part of their “little blended family”—the house remains a work in progress. While the nursery is decorated to perfection with lush houseplants and an artfully mismatched striped wallpaper pattern, they admit there’s still some babyproofing to be done. “This baby is an Olympic crawler,” Donnley says, shaking his head.
While Hart and Donnley describe themselves as a maximalist and a minimalist, respectively, it’s easy to see whose aesthetic emerged victorious. “I like a lot of pillows, I like a lot of art, and I have a ton of plants,” Hart gushes. Jewel-tone paint—emerald green in the living room, rose quartz in the dining room—checkered wallpaper, patterned rugs, and eclectic decor reflect a deep affinity for Black art and ephemera. A pair of West African colon statues, wood figures originally created to mock colonizers, stand guard in the foyer. “I was immediately drawn to them because they look like they provide protection,” Hart says. Just off of the living room, a pair of colorful beaded Yoruba chairs are among the couple’s prized possessions.
When Hart talks about what it was like turning their house into a home, she’s careful not to sugarcoat. “There have been ebbs and flows with this experience,” she says diplomatically. Donnley is a bit more direct: “We were superstressed,” he says of their frame of mind in the months after their purchase. “We were questioning what we had done.” A reno is a lot to handle as it is—they hired and fired a contractor in the process—but during theirs, Hart also gave birth to the couple’s first child, East, now 14 months old.
put a toilet and a sink in there as well,” Hart says of the former setup. “It just didn’t make sense for us.” The overhauled room now boasts white and forest green Fireclay tile, just one toilet, a marble-topped double vanity with gold-tone accents, and a shower, which was made possible by removing the butler stairs. And it’s Hart’s favorite space in the house: “Every time I go in there, I’m like, this is so nice. It feels like a hotel.”
![particularly puzzling upstairs bathroom. “There was a sink and a toilet, and then [the previous owners] added a linen closet and put a toilet and a sink in there as well,” Hart says of the former setup. “It just didn’t make sense for us.” The overhauled room now boasts white and forest green Fireclay tile and a marble-topped double vanity with](https://media-s3-us-east-1.ceros.com/domino/images/2024/04/26/e5eb62560c9f4e228e75351af2d94fed/1137.png)
The couple had hoped to carve out even more space by removing a fireplace in the kitchen, but when they learned that its removal would compromise the structural integrity of the house, they opted to cut into the brick in order to slot a stove directly into the hearth, which acts as ventilation.
They also ripped up several layers of old linoleum flooring throughout and gutted portions of the home, including a particularly puzzling upstairs bathroom. “There was a sink and a toilet, and then [the previous owners] added a linen closet and
Once their offer was accepted, Hart and Donnley immediately went to work on renovations that honored the home’s history while rewriting certain narratives. For starters, they removed a second staircase originally intended to be used by household staff. “Because of the history of butler stairs, we were like, ‘Let’s get rid of those,’” Hart says. The reclaimed space provided an opportunity to create a cozy breakfast nook in the kitchen and added valuable square footage back to a tricky layout. “Typically, Victorian kitchens are large, but this one is not,” Hart adds.
Frustrated, the couple tried to devise strategies for evading bias, like using Donnley’s first initial rather than his first name because, as Hart jokes: “Ain’t no white person named Ebony.” Still, it wasn’t until the couple’s friends FaceTimed them for a virtual tour of a Victorian in East Orange, New Jersey—a predominantly Black neighborhood—that their luck changed.
“‘Y’all need to put an offer on this house,’ and we were like, ‘You know what? We trust you. Why not?’” Donnley says. “We bought it sight unseen.”
a Black queer couple—Hart is nonbinary and Donnley is transgender—each rejection reinforced their hunch that they were being profiled and sidelined. “For one house that we really wanted, they wanted proof of funds. That was something that we never experienced,” Hart recalls. “We know a lot about redlining and gentrification, but I think it took us a second to realize what was happening.”
Their search began in earnest at the end of 2021, but the process turned out to be much more arduous than either of them could have imagined. “We put in 13 offers and we were declined 12 times,” Hart says of the “emotionally distressing” ordeal. As
STYLING BY
Julia Stevens
WORDS BY
Roxanne Fequiere
PHOTOGRAPHY BY Kelly Marshall
Left: Hart’s Makeup by Elika Hilata. Right: Pendant Lamp, CB2; Chairs, Kaba Hydara; Coffee Table, Isamu Noguchi; Peale Green Paint, Benjamin Moore.
LAST
AT
Through a ten-month reno, Ericka Hart rewrote the story of her family’s East Orange, New Jersey, Victorian.
When writer and sex educator Ericka Hart and her partner, Ebony Donnley, decided to trade in years of apartment living in New York City for homeownership, the couple settled on what kind of house they wanted to live in right away. “It had to be old,” says Donnley, a writer and poet. “We were watching HGTV and This Old House and all that and just fantasizing, really not thinking about what it would entail.”
Ceramic Tile in Peabody, Fireclay
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Linen Bedding, Parachute
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Curved Brass Mirror, Etsy
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Stool, IKEA
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“Because of the history of butler stairs, we were
like, ‘Let’s get rid
of those.’”
AT
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Stockholm Rug, IKEA
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Coffee Table, Isamu Noguchi
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Saint Germain Limewash, Bauwerk
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Frame TV, Samsung
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